1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods of routing electronic messages. Specifically, the present invention relates to methods for sequentially routing electronic messages to a series of recipients.
2. Background and Related Art
Practically all businesses today have a mail system permitting paper documents to be distributed to recipients sequentially. Consider the process of publishing an article in a journal. When an article is received from an author, it is placed in the mail system of the business. The article is first delivered to an editor who determines whether or not to publish the article. If the editor decides that the article should be published, it is sent to a proof reader. Otherwise, the editor rejects the article and it is returned to the author. Assuming that the article is to be published, the article is returned to the editor for review after it has been proofread. Finally, the article is sent to a layout department, where it is actually arranged and placed in the forthcoming publication. Paper documents are easily distributed to different persons in a sequential manner.
The sequential distribution of paper documents is usually successful, but has significant drawbacks, two of which are time and money. Consider a document that must move sequentially from a person in Los Angeles to a person in New York to a person in Miami and back to the person in Los Angeles. If overnight mail is used, the time required to complete this route is at least three days and probably more, and the cost can be substantial. Time and money are factors even when a paper document is sequentially delivered within a single business.
The growing ability of computers to transmit a document electronically appears to be the answer, but while a paper document can be sequentially distributed, general purpose electronic messaging systems have often not been capable of delivering an electronic message in a similar fashion. Rather, electronic messages can typically be sent to persons on distribution lists of varying complexity, but the electronic message is sent to those persons simultaneously rather than sequentially. Many electronic messaging systems simply do not have the capability to distribute an electronic message sequentially, even though many electronic messages must travel through the same stages and to the same persons as paper documents.
Some electronic messaging systems are capable of sequential, or workflow, distribution of messages, documents, and the like. For instance, many organizations in which a number of employees repeatedly perform specialized tasks with respect to documents have systems for electronically circulating the documents. Insurance companies that process insurance claims represent one example of this type of organization. Many insurance companies convert claim forms into computer-displayable documents, which are then sequentially distributed to different departments, each of which performs part of a defined claim adjudication process. These systems include one or a limited number of predefined workflow routes that guide the documents to sequential recipients in the organization. The routes are predefined by the software developer or vendor or are created by a system administrator. In any event, the routes defined in such messaging systems are not capable of being modified or created by users who might wish to sequentially distribute a message to recipients according to a route other than the predefined routes.
Still other messaging systems have workflow distribution capabilities, whereby a message can be distributed to recipients in series. In these workflow systems, routing instructions are attached to each message to be sequentially distributed. For instance, the routing instructions might specify that the message is to be sent to a recipient A, then to a recipient B, and finally to a recipient C. The message, along with the attached routing instructions, is sent first to recipient A. The client system of recipient A then processes the routing instructions such that the message is transmitted to recipient B. The client system of recipient B likewise executes the routing instructions and sends the message to recipient C. While this approach to workflow distribution of documents has reduced much of the time and cost otherwise associated with distribution of paper documents, it has several drawbacks. For instance, each recipient in the series, with the possible exception of the last recipient, is responsible for processing the routing instructions and forwarding the message to the next recipient. If the client is somehow incapable of processing the routing instructions, successive recipients may never receive the message. Moreover, if a message is lost or deleted, the accompanying routing instructions are also lost, and the message is not delivered to later intended recipients.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need in the art for a reliable workflow document distribution system that can replace conventional delivery of paper documents. It would be an advancement in the art to provide distribution systems that are flexible enough to allow routes to be defined by substantially any user that desires to do so. It would be advantageous if such workflow distribution systems did not rely on client systems to process routing instructions.